Abstract

The starting point of this study is the article of M. Senellart in which the French scholar speaks about a curious "absence" of Jesus in the late Foucault. How is it possible that the late Foucault who gives an account of the will of truth-telling from Sophocles to Saint Augustine, does not mention at all Jesus? In my paper I try to argue that though Senellart is perfectly right in stating that in his writings and courses dedicated to the problem of Christianity Foucault does not seem to be interested in the life and teaching of Jesus, we find, though, a "secret presence" of the figure of Christ in the analysis of the Cynic movement that we can read in the second half of The Courage of Truth. Actually, it seems that while Foucault analyses the Cynic philosophers, he draws, rather implicitly (by some fundamental aspects that remind us ineluctably of the Christian tradition regarding the figure of Christ), the portrait of Jesus. I also draw attention to the "Cynic hypothesis" of the American "Jesus Seminar" founded by F. Gerald Downing which, curiously enough, developed the controversial hypothesis concerning the Cynic roots of the gospels in the eighties – nearly at the same time as Foucault held his last lectures concerning the relationship and the similarity between Cynicism and Christianity at the College de France.

Keywords: foucault, cynicism, christianity, history of truth, parrhesia

How to Cite: Cseke, Á. (2020). Jésus le Cynique? Un aspect notable du Courage de la vérité de Michel Foucault. Le Foucaldien, 6(1), 5. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/lefou.67